Roger Lloyd-Thomas, who has died aged 91, fought with the Indian Artillery against Rommel in North Africa; after the war, he joined the civil service and served on a number of official inquiries, including that into the Aberfan disaster.
In May 1942, Lloyd-Thomas was a gunner officer serving with "F" Troop 4 Battery 2nd Indian Field Regiment, Indian Artillery (2 IFR), part of 3 Indian Motor Brigade. The brigade was ordered to defend a feature south-east of Bir Hakeim, Libya, and arrived in position at the extreme south end of the Gazala Line on the afternoon of May 26.
2 IFR dug gun pits and slit trenches. That night, scouts reported large enemy columns moving to the south and east behind a screen of armoured cars and, at first light on May 27, Lloyd-Thomas's troop commander said over the radio: "I can see the whole German Army."
"Don't be a fool," his battery commander broke in crossly, "you always exaggerate. I'm coming to see for myself." A few moments later he said, "By God he's right!"
Rommel was about to unleash a huge "right hook" around the southern flank of the Allied position. The brigade stood in the very line of the enemy's advance.
Shortly before 7am, the 25-pounder guns of 2 IFR opened fire. The concentrated fire of all three batteries broke up the enemy formations and for almost an hour the situation was chaotic. The battlefield was a shambles of wrecked and burning tanks, with soft-skinned vehicles ablaze and anti-tank guns and their crews overrun. By the middle of the morning the regiment, although badly mauled, was still fighting.
When Lloyd-Thomas's troop ran out of ammunition, the regimental second-in-command strode over to him and demanded to know why he and his crew were all sitting down. "What would you like us to do?" replied Lloyd-Thomas, "Throw stones at them?"
Lloyd-Thomas was captured but managed to get away from the light Italian tank left to guard him and his men. He and a few survivors set off in a signal truck. They were chased by a German armoured car, a much faster vehicle, but were saved, Lloyd-Thomas said afterwards, by the German drill book, which ruled that their pursuers should stop every time they opened fire.
The escapers found themselves at Eighth Army HQ. Lloyd-Thomas was asked to wait in a tent and had visions of being shot for desertion. A major-general arrived and asked him where his regiment was. When he said he did not know, the officer laughed uproariously: "Lost your regiment, what? I have lost a whole Divisional HQ!"
After four hours of ferocious combat, the regiment's losses in terms of those killed or taken prisoner were numbered in hundreds; the brigade had been virtually destroyed. Rommel, however, had lost more than a third of his tanks in a single day and had received a sharp check to his ambitions.
Roger Lloyd-Thomas was born at Abercarn, Monmouthshire, on February 7 1919. After Barry Grammar School he was awarded two scholarships and went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he read Modern Languages. After graduating, he served in the Royal Artillery and was then posted to India, where he was attached to 2 IFR. The regiment arrived in Egypt in February 1942.
In 1943 Lloyd-Thomas was transferred to Allied Force HQ Algiers and, the next year, moved to Italy and served in Alexander's forward HQ at Siena, Florence and Bologna.
After the war, he gave evidence at the Nuremberg trials, afterwards retiring from the Army in the rank of major and joining the civil service.
There Lloyd-Thomas specialised in government inquiries into disasters and in helping to draft the follow-up legislation. His role in examining such incidents – the floods of 1953; the Aberfan tragedy in 1966; the Ronan Point tower-block collapse in 1968; and the Flixborough chemical plant explosion in 1974 – earned him the nickname "Thomas the Disaster".
On secondment from the civil service, Lloyd-Thomas moved to the Housing Corporation. After retiring from the service, he joined the House of Commons as clerk to the Trade and Industry Committee.
Roger Lloyd-Thomas died on June 12. He married, in 1945, Stella Willmett, who survives him with their three sons and a daughter.
Roger Lloyd-Thomas, Gunner at El Alamein
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